Biology ultimate technology? Comment on reddit thread

That is my take, this is potentially the ultimate technology barring something that manipulates physical law, though I wouldn't say biology but advanced synthetic biology to be more precise.

People tend to underestimate the power of what can actually be created when you transcend evolutionary limitations with cells.

Biology uses cells as main workhorses in many cases, but synthetic biology can allow cells to construct precise nano-structures organic and inorganic of arbitrary function. Structures that can be scaled to macroscopic dimensions if need be. Cells are able to drastically alter metabolic rate in nature, reducing it as needed, basically halting metabolism and allowing them to consume practically no energy for decades or little energy for even longer.

People tend to think in terms of just animals or plants in terms of the limits of synthetic biology in fiction. But potentially anything could be built by synthetic biology, a TV, a car, a computer, a plane.

Not only are cells able to produce electricity, but they are also able to consume electricity, not just light or chemical fuels. There have been closed systems with biological organisms only in-taking external energy able to recycle all components and continue functioning for decades or more. Self contained devices using cells can be made to recycle all wastes and not need exchange of atoms with the environment only the exchange of energy. Though such restriction can be lifted if it is more convenient as needed.

The thing is cells replicate, and could potentially be used to mass produce. Right now the efficiency of conversion from solar to chemical is quite low, and most plants have low resilience to hostile conditions, they are also not designed to be coupled with a computer for the production of arbitrary products. But cells could be coupled with the energy produced from fission or in the future from fusion, allowing unlimited replicative ability, the excess energy could be used to purify or scavenge any resources that were needed.

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Tech comment future potential hypothesizing

Comment done regards technological capabilities that may enable self-sufficiency at high levels  of technological capability, without the global supply chains, and hard to get components.   Which may be useful in things like future off world colonies, and may be necessary for true self sufficiency of such colonies, and easing their rapid expansion in hostile worlds.

Realistically there are only two possibilities, and they may not be that realistic depending on who you ask.

1.) Hard nano or atomically precise manufacturing, molecular machinery unlike that seen in nature able to self repair, separate and recycle component at the level of atoms, similar to life but supposedly with more precision. I don't think this is possible outside specialized lab conditions with vacuums, probably requiring low temperature.

2.) Extremophiles have shown biology surpassing the limits biologists believed for life, some organisms also were able to synthesize unthinkable ultra reactive substances that would react with almost any internal cellular component and cause an explosive reaction, that is one rocket fuel ingredient.

Hypothetically, there may be a way to combine our advances in manufacturing and information processing with biology itself, molecular machines, through extremely advanced synthetic biology using unevolved and unevolvable molecular systems. It depends on the limits of advanced synthetic biology, but I wouldn't bet against it.

Requires intermediate step of mastering de novo protein design, and multicomponent molecular machines, de novo complex multicellular organisms. Once the science develops it may take years for hundreds of specialists to design living machines for specialized purposes.

That is eventually you would have living machines able to gene sequence, dna synthesize, advanced recycling, advanced manufacturing with nanoscale precision(as seen in nature but with novel materials not seen in nature), energy generation and storage, advanced computing and data storage, etc.

The machines would be designed to exhibit negligible senescence or agelessness, able to last indefinitely, the systems would be mostly self-enclosed, utilizing energy to self repair and recycle wastes. In some cases they could be fully self-enclosed exchanging only energy with the exterior environment.

Such systems should be able to take arbitrary raw soil or raw matter, and decompose it down, break it down to atoms and molecules, and utilize the materials to build other copies of themselves, for growth, and for self repair.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a a movie from the 80s featuring synthetic humans from the Tyrell corporation whose motto is "More Human than Human".   Such can be viewed as a kind of prophesy, a self-fulfilling prophesy, as is much of science fiction.

Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction cyberpunk/tech-noir film directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is a modified film adaptation of the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in which genetically engineered replicants, which are visually indistinguishable from adult humans, are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation. The use of replicants on Earth is banned and they are exclusively utilized for dangerous or menial work on off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and killed ("retired") by special police operatives known as "Blade Runners". The plot focuses on a group of recently escaped replicants hiding in L.A. and the burnt-out expert Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down.-source wiki

People have talked about metal robots or robots with artificial polymer skins ,these may take place.  But a form of advanced synthetic biology is going to be very hard to surpass,  the only competing less realistic tech is what is called hard nano, whether hard nano can be used to make self-repairing, self-maintaining, ageless humanoids remain in question.   The laws of physics, the true laws, do not forbid the creation of synthetic humans, humans born of intelligent design through computer assisted design software.   

So it may come to pass, that one day, assuming the human world doesn't self destruct, progress will allow for artificial ageless humans of any race, gender or age.   Humans who may be born with synthetic brains filled with knowledge of a thousand lifespans, more than a thousand years of experience from birth.

Brief comment on qualiange

Richard Jones pretty much offered indisputable proof of this on the nanotech front. The best that we'll end up with is a wide variety of narrow, weak AI's that can do better than humans at maybe 1-2 particular things. That's a far cry from most people's definition of "singularity." Read Giulio Tononi or Scott Aronson's works to see what I mean.-noam23,kurzweilai forums

The thing is synthetic biology is capable of more much more than natural biology. And it can probably replicate the best of our tech, such as optical fiber for long range communications. The myelinated axon is slow bandwidth digital channel of very high latency. An optical fiber could send far more information at far greater speed.

We also have to take into account what will happen with brain machine interfaces. Human communication will evolve to incorporate qualia, even never before experienced qualia. It will be like the difference between prelanguage animals and postlanguage animals, humans. When communication involves custom qualia language, able to transmit things far more efficiently and to provide intuitive grasp to pretty much any field. Can you imagine that? Even barring the reality that genetic modification even with just the presently available gene pool witll sky rocket iq, a qualia language will revolutionize the exchange of information between agents taking them literally to higher dimensions.

A collection of humans with native qualia language should be able to accomplish far more than humans with their more rudimentary language closer to the beasts, just as language has allowed us to transcend the beasts, so will a higher form of language allow for higher advances. I would call such qualiange.